A Flight of Autonomous Space Vehicles

I have envisioned these as unmanned vehicles because there are no windows, and they would therefore rely upon sensors and cameras instead to gather visual data. The vehicle design comes from a Blender tutorial on YouTube that adapts very well to BforArtists. Many Blender tutorials are difficult to follow with BforArtists, but this one is a breeze. Just start with a text object, add some modifiers, apply some materials using the Principled BSDF, add the lighting and the background and then render. I also duplicated the ship and placed the duplicates in formation. In the U.S. Airforce, a Flight of airplanes or other vehicles is a group of from three to six, hence the title, "A Flight of Autonomous Space Vehicles".

I didn't like the original colors used in the tutorial so I used my own drawn from HTML hex values. I added an additional lamp that was not in the tutorial to illuminate dark areas that were hidden by the positioning of the original image. After I added the new lamp, I repositioned the image and duplicated it. Realistically though, it is unlikely that three-point lighting would exist in space, even in the glow of a planet and two of its moons.

Because, in the event of a visual systems failure the crew wouldn't be able to see outside of the vessel. They would be flying blind. Windows would provide an alternative means of visibility in such a case, until repairs could be completed. As for leisure, perhaps that should be left to the Carnival Cruise Line when it ventures into space.

An autonomous vehicle wouldn't need windows in the event of a visual systems failure, only self-repairing systems. An autonomous exploration ship would be somewhat like Lewis and Clark without Lewis and Clark, except that it's a ship that is essentially an artificial life form with perhaps two androids on board performing various tasks within it. We could call the androids Lewis and Clark just for fun.